BOSTON — Regina Lawless reached a professional peak at the age of 40, becoming the first director of diversity and inclusion for Instagram. But after her husband passed away suddenly in 2021, she wondered if she had neglected her personal life and what it means for Black women to succeed in the business world.
Although she felt supported in the role, “there wasn’t a willingness on the part of the leadership to take it on completely,” Lawless said. “Really, it is the leaders and every employee who create the culture of inclusion.”
This inspired her venture, Bossy and Blissful, a collective for Black female executives to commiserate and coach each other on how to deal with misogyny, a specific type of misogyny experienced by Black women, or to be the only person of color in the C suite. .
“I am now committed to helping other women, especially women of color and Black women, understand that we don’t have to sacrifice ourselves for success. We can find spaces or create our own spaces where we can be successful and thrive,” says Lawless, based in Oakland, California.
Many women in the Lawless group have no colleagues in the workplace, making them the “Onlys” – the only Black person or woman of color – which can lead to feelings of loneliness or isolation.
“Coming together helps us when we go back and we are the ‘only loners’ in many of our organizations,” Lawless said.
As attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives rage, Black women looking to climb the corporate ladder face a more hostile landscape than ever. Apart from having to constantly prove themselves and talk in a way that cannot be described as angry or emotional, obtaining top management positions cannot stop the twin dilemmas of the racial and gender pay gap. All of this leads to disproportionate representation of Black female senior leadership.
The resignation of Dr. Claudine Gay in January as Harvard’s first black president after accusations of anti-Semitism and plagiarism was just the latest in a revolving door of black women aggressively questioned or abandoned after reaching peaks in their careers.
Black female professionals were also hit hard when an administrator at a historically black university in Missouri accused the school’s white president of bullying and racism and then committed suicide. This led some to create networking groups and mentorships. For others, it caused an exodus into entrepreneurship and reinvention.
In Boston, Charity Wallace, 37, a biotech professional, and Chassity Coston, 35, a high school principal, reflected on their own career struggles in light of Gay’s ordeal. Wallace said she has become more aware of her mental health, and that’s where their young black professionals group, sororities and family come in.
“It’s a constant struggle to fit in and really have your girlfriends, or your house girls, or my mother and my sister. I complain to them every day about something that happens at work,” Wallace said. “So it’s important to have a circle of black women that you can vent to because, again, you can’t let things like this sit. We have stood still for too long.”
Coston said she mourned Gay’s resignation and fearing something similar could happen to her made her reconsider her future in education. But she didn’t want to give up.
“Yes, we will continue to be despised as black people, as black women. It will keep happening. But we cannot allow that,” Coston said. ‘I now speak from my strength, because that was not always how I felt during my stages of grief. We have to keep fighting, just like Rosa (Parks), just like Harriet (Tubman).”
Gay struggled despite her resume full of accomplishments, Wallace said.
“I can’t imagine how she felt trying to do that and getting all these awards, her degrees that she has, the credentials, and it just seemed like even that wasn’t enough to stay,” Wallace said.
The backlash against DEI efforts is only amplified by clashes over identity politics. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones’ bid to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill stalled in 2021 because of her work with the 1619 Project, a collection of essays on race. The 2022 confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman confirmed by the Supreme Court, were criticized for their harsh and race-based questioning.
President Joe Biden stated emphatically that he would only consider a Black woman for the Supreme Court, deepening resentment toward DEI, said Johnny Taylor, CEO of The Society for Human Resource Management.
“Contrast and compare a CEO standing in front of his workplace or her workplace and saying, ‘I’m just going to consider, the next candidates will only be these,’” Taylor said. “That created real tension.”
Black women are questioning whether it’s worth it to try for top positions, said Portia Allen-Kyle, chief counsel at the social justice organization Color of Change. Extreme scrutiny and online vitriol are high prices to pay.
“What I’ve heard from quite a few Black women – family, friends and otherwise – is a small sense of frustration at the idea that excellence is not enough,” Allen-Kyle said. “The ‘Work twice as hard, be twice as good… you might get hired on your merit.’ That lesson that that may not be the case is difficult, frustrating and disappointing everywhere.”
The number of Black women in the workforce is at risk of shrinking due to a lack of support and opportunities, advocates say.
Black women make up 7.4% of the U.S. population, but hold only 1.4% of top executive positions and 1.6% of senior vice president positions, according to a 2020 report from Lean In, “The State of Black Women in Corporate America.” U.S. Census data shows that Black women who worked year-round and full-time in 2021 earned 69 cents for every dollar paid to a white man, while white women earned 80 cents for every dollar.
Lawless, who left Instagram/Meta in August, thinks more black women will decide to become their own bosses instead of going to a traditional workplace.
“There will be a chilling effect and you will see more Black women transitioning into entrepreneurship, which we are already doing at higher rates,” Lawless said. “Companies have a real problem. Since the pandemic, more women have been lost at director and senior levels.”
Even standalone companies can’t avoid DEI resistance. The Fearless Fund, a small venture capital firm, is embroiled in a lawsuit accusing a grant program for Black women-owned businesses of discrimination. According to the company’s founders, the lawsuit has scared away potential investors.
Vacancies for diversity officers and similar positions have decreased in recent months. The combined share of venture capital funding for companies owned by Black and Latina women has fallen to less than 1% after briefly crossing that threshold — at 1.05% — in 2021, according to the nonprofit digitalundived.
Stephanie Felix of Austin, Texas, just started her own DEI consulting firm in January. It’s not something the 36-year-old, who worked at DEI for business review website Glassdoor, initially saw for himself.
“People say there are risks in leaving, but there are also a lot of risks in staying,” Felix said.
Colleagues, family and even Felix himself had reservations about her career jump. But she said she has seen too many times when DEI hires went from “office animal to office menace.” Their arrival was heralded as a new chapter, but senior leaders were unwilling to follow through with the promised resources or authority to effect change.
“I applaud women who choose to step away and choose themselves. I applaud myself for it too,” Felix said. “Even though it’s not easy, it gives you more sovereignty over your life, which I think is definitely worth it.”
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Associated Press business writer Alexandra Olson in New York contributed to this report.
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Terry Tang reported from Phoenix. She is a member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @ttangAP.